“Always remember that you are unique, just like everyone else.” – Margaret Mead
Not long ago I was in Las Vegas visiting my sister-in-law, Bev and brother-in-law, Dave. One morning, Bev asked Dave and I if we would go to the market and buy some groceries. On the way to the store I mentioned to Dave that he should choose the checkout line because I have a near perfect record of choosing the slowest line. Even if it is the shortest line something is bound to go wrong. It will be a shift change just as I reach the cash register and one cashier will exit as the new cashier counts the cash in the till, or the cashier runs out of change and has to call the manager and wait for the manager to come, or the person ahead of me picks something off the shelf that is missing a scanning label and someone needs to go to aisle 22 to do a price check. It’s always something. Dave disagreed and said that no one on the planet had a worse record than himself and he began to detail the litany of delays he experienced and the resulting psychic pain caused by those tragic checkout experiences.
So, we agreed that each of us would pick a lane and the person with the slowest line would have to buy the other a beer. When we entered the store, we each got a grocery cart and divided the groceries between us. When we had piled all of the requisite groceries from Bev’s list into our carts, we headed off to the check stands. Dave chose cashier #6 and I chose #4 because there was just one cart ahead of me. The cart ahead of me was overflowing but a lot of the bulk was in the cases of soda, giant bags of chips and a dozen or more frozen Totino’s Pizzas. I figured the scanning would go quickly. And I was right.
The woman with the cart was a very large woman wearing black spandex shorts that didn’t quite reach above her butt-crack. It’s really not good form to try judge a woman’s weight, but I couldn’t help but think she weighed close to 350 pounds. If she was a foot taller, I thought she might be able to play center on a football team. The Seattle Seahawks needed a new center and I began thinking of the bonus I might receive by providing such an outstanding lead. To get the spandex to stretch as far it must to provide coverage over such a large caboose, the fabric was stretched quite thin and I began worrying about what might happen if there was a wardrobe failure. If it split in the back could the force of the resulting explosion force her back into my cart? I took a couple of steps back to give her more space. Soon all her groceries were scanned and bagged and loaded back into her cart. The cashier informed her of the total sale, the lady opened her purse and searched and searched for her credit card. I looked over at Dave and began thinking about the cold beer he was about to buy. He still had one cart in front of him. Piece of cake. I had finally won.
Then I heard the cashier say, “I’m sorry maam but your card has been declined.” “How can that be?”, the poor woman said. I began to sweat. “No problem”, the lady said. “I have some cash.” And she reached into her purse and pulled out a few twenties. “You are $127.43 short”, said the cashier. “How embarrassing!”, says the lady. “How can that be possible? Oh well, I guess I will have to put some things back.” And pizza by pizza, soda by soda, chip bag by chip bag the contents of the cart diminished until the total was pitifully reduced to the amount of cash the poor woman had. “Manager to checkstand 4”, I heard the cashier say. Slowly, the manager appeared and very brightly asked, “Hello Michelle. How may I help you?” Michelle said, “My machine has just run out of tape and there is none in the back-up shelf.” “No problem,” said the manager. I will be back in a jiffy. I watched as he turned to leave and began to talk with another employee. Dave had by now, cashed out, and was signaling to me that he was getting quite thirsty. A few minutes later, the manager returned with a fresh roll of tape and the cashier slowly, but carefully, began threading the tape onto the cash register.
“What is your favorite beer?”, I asked Dave as we finally exited the store.
Husbandry 